http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/atheists-beat-the-faithful-in-knowledge-of-religion-20100928-15vru.html
Atheists beat the faithful in knowledge of religion Mitchell Landsberg September 29, 2010 LOS ANGELES: If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist. Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term ''blind faith''. A majority of Protestants, for instance, could not identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolise the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them. Atheists and agnostics - those who believe there is no God or who are unsure - were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge - so close as to be statistically tied. So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian? American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum. ''These are people who thought a lot about religion,'' he said. ''They're not indifferent. They care about it.'' Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said atheists and agnostics also out-performed believers who had a similar level of education. The groups at the top of the US Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were not affiliated with any faith, black Protestants and Latino Catholics. Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were included in the survey, but their numbers were too small to be broken out as statistically significant groups. Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University and author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't, served as an adviser on the survey. ''I think in general the survey confirms what I argued in the book, which is that we know almost nothing about our own religions and even less about the religions of other people,'' he said. He said he found it significant that Mormons, who are not considered Christian by many fundamentalists, showed greater knowledge of the Bible than even evangelical Christians. Los Angeles Times [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
